


Don't Play the Player

by Etnoe



Series: Quick Draw [1]
Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Embedded Images, Friendship, Gen, Growing Up, Post-Canon, Simon Arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-08-31 13:44:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8580784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etnoe/pseuds/Etnoe
Summary: Attending school turns out to be a total blast for Lambo. And there he forms the "pride" he fought over with Rauji ... with a mishap or two along the way.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Lambo picked the dumbest, most adorable thing to be proudest of and I love him and how much he loves his family. However well his baby self hides it!

* * *

 

 

Lambo loved school. _Loved._ Even Nana, optimistic and forgiving mother though she was, was shocked at how happily the seven-year-old took to finally starting his formal education, trotting off to school holding I-Pin's hand and giving up all his willful roaming tendencies.  
  
There were a million other kids to play with at school. Hundreds, even! More than a whole dozen in his class, even aside from I-Pin being there too! He'd hated his new haircut at first, so tiny and useless, but now that his hair was too small to hide weapons in, it was the easiest thing imaginable to make the teachers say that he was a good boy. Giving up the right to cram hand grenades down people's shirts was worth it for a gold star on his classwork. If something made him start sniffling, there was a whole group of girls who'd stop playing their skipping and clapping games to offer him candy, and other people who'd at least do something like pat him on the back. Playing ball with kids smaller than Tsuna and the rest of the family was the best: No one mistook him for the ball anymore!  
  
He played with everybody, and - it very secretly felt surprising, but he definitely didn't bawl in the bathroom about it - everybody played with him.  
  
Lambo didn't get at first why his classmates stopped their own games, the day I-Pin asked him to play pretend while dressing up with things that were left over from class's drama presentation. It wasn't like he'd dug high-heeled shoes out of the box, so he wasn't even walking funny, like that time Haru taught him about The Art of Disguise. Still, everybody stopped what they were doing, right in the middle of break time, so they could stare. _It's just another way to play pretend!_ he thought in squirming internal protest as the problem dawned on him; even if he was in a dress, it was for the kind of game he'd happily played a whole lot with girls in his class! He was going to be a dinosaur in about ten minutes anyway. Putting the outfit on hadn't even felt like a dumb suggestion when I-Pin made it, even if now he realised that people would say he was supposed to think so. He tugged at a lacy sleeve as if the only problem was that the clothes weren't sitting right, and I-Pin, her old shyness striking her, shuffled behind him to get away from the stares.  
  
Then they laughed at him. _Everyone_ did. They called him names as bad as anything Gokudera ever said, and even if he'd still had weapons he wouldn't have been able to use them, it was that surprising that school could be this way. When he started crying, the laughter got louder.  
  
He ran home, hearing a sharp gasp from behind him as he left I-Pin in the middle of the laughter. But she wasn't mad at him, for once, when she came out of school. With a patter of feet he could recognise as hers just from the sound, she came up to the room he shared with Futa, pushed an apology letter under the door, and ran off.  
  
Lambo thought about it all for a long time, until the house was quiet, and Futa had stopped sleepily counting stars and started giving little snores. He had an idea. Or a plan. (In a few terms, he'd get a smile from his language teacher for using one of his vocabulary words correctly: "I have a _philosophy_.")  
  
The next day Lambo strode to I-Pin's desk, and as she cringed with guilt, he said: "Do you want to pick up our dress-up game? I didn't _really_ mean to just leave it like that..."  
  
After all, he loved playing all the games he'd learned and learned to share with others - skipping, chasing, puzzles, video games, playing pretend, all of it. After so much time spent running after his older friends and so often feeling like he wasn't _with_ them in the ways that counted, it was a different and super-nice feeling to play as freely as he had for the last few weeks. He'd always been with I-Pin since they'd met, though, and nothing made it feel like the two of them didn't fit together, even the zillions of times they'd fought. Why would he let anyone convince him that he shouldn't play any kind of game he wanted to, when he could have his own kind of fun with someone like her?

***

Ten years later, I-Pin flew up from her seat, where she'd been cooing and laughing over an old photograph album, and yelled in realisation: "You asked to play in front of everyone on purpose, so I'd beat up everyone who laughed!"  
  
Lambo's eyes both opened wide in a look that was often on his face: _Uh-oh, caught out!_ I-Pin had mostly-reflexively annihilated half the class after he'd asked to pick up the dress-up game, yelling all the while about how Lambo didn't deserve to be teased. Their family had almost been relieved, as if it was easier to know how to handle them when they didn't behave, and afterwards their classmates had either been too scared _not_ to play with them or impressed by the whirlwind fighting skill and eager to be better friends. Looking back, he could say with assurance that it had been an elegant solution.  
  
"And here I thought you were trying to be nice to me about that whole incident, you manipulator!" I-Pin said, laughing, and jumped him with a headlock - hugged him - and punched him.  
  
"It didn't turn out so bad, in spite of that. You're still playing with me, so you must have had fun too," he pointed out, muffled, and she settled on a hug.


End file.
